Resilience of a giant clam subsistence fishery in Kiribati to climate change (original) (raw)
Related papers
Evaluating Social and Ecological Vulnerability of Coral Reef Fisheries to Climate Change
PLoS ONE, 2013
There is an increasing need to evaluate the links between the social and ecological dimensions of human vulnerability to climate change. We use an empirical case study of 12 coastal communities and associated coral reefs in Kenya to assess and compare five key ecological and social components of the vulnerability of coastal social-ecological systems to temperature induced coral mortality [specifically: 1) environmental exposure; 2) ecological sensitivity; 3) ecological recovery potential; 4) social sensitivity; and 5) social adaptive capacity]. We examined whether ecological components of vulnerability varied between government operated no-take marine reserves, community-based reserves, and openly fished areas. Overall, fished sites were marginally more vulnerable than community-based and government marine reserves. Social sensitivity was indicated by the occupational composition of each community, including the importance of fishing relative to other occupations, as well as the susceptibility of different fishing gears to the effects of coral bleaching on target fish species. Key components of social adaptive capacity varied considerably between the communities. Together, these results show that different communities have relative strengths and weaknesses in terms of social-ecological vulnerability to climate change.
Adaptive co-management approaches have been at the core of attempts to apply resilience principles to small-scale fisheries. Although recommendations of what should be done to promote resilience are commonplace , insights from practice are rare. The authors provide a critical analysis of WorldFish's effort to improve the resilience of small-scale fisheries, particularly experiences with facilitating, implementing and sustaining a collaborative form of management referred to as community-based resource management (CBRM) in five regions in Solomon Islands over nine years. A participatory diagnosis and adaptive management framework was applied to foster the emergence of CBRM in intense community engagements. The authors reflect on the adoption of resilience principles in their practice through: 1) defining a fishery to fit local governance contexts; 2) drawing on multiple knowledge sources to guide local rules to protect the ecological, social and other functions of small-scale fisheries; 3) fostering local ownership and participation, while also brokering external links for learning; 4) developing monitoring that is meaningful for communities ; and 5) promoting inclusive forms of governance that are responsive to change. Results were fair at best because adaptive new, negotiated forms of management were sustained in only two regions. However, insights led to changes in WorldFish's practice, and demonstrate that embedding resilience principles (such as encouraging learning, fostering adaptive systems, and thinking and promoting links across scales of governance) requires capacity among all participants to reflect, adapt and adjust.
Toward Operationalizing Resilience Concepts in Australian Marine Sectors Coping with Climate Change
Ecology and Society, 2013
Toward operationalizing resilience concepts in Australian marine sectors coping with climate change. Ecology and Society 18(3): 4. http://dx.ABSTRACT. We seek to contribute to the scholarship on operationalizing resilience concepts via a working resilience indicator framework. Although it requires further refinement, this practical framework provides a useful baseline for generating awareness and understanding of the complexity and diversity of variables that impinge on resilience. It has potential value for the evaluation, benchmarking, monitoring, and reporting of marine system resilience. The necessity for such a framework is a consequence of the levels of complexity and uncertainty associated with climate change and other global change stressors in marine socialecological systems, and the problems involved in assessing their resilience. There is a need for: (1) methodologies that bring together knowledge from diverse sources and disciplines to investigate the complexity and uncertainty of interactions between climate, ocean, and human systems and (2) frameworks to facilitate the evaluation and monitoring of the social-ecological resilience of marine-dependent sectors. Accordingly, our main objective is to demonstrate the virtues of combining a case study methodology with complex adaptive systems approaches as a means to improve understanding of the multifaceted dynamics of marine sectors experiencing climate change. The resilience indicator framework, the main product of the methodology, is developed using four case studies across key Australian marine biodiversity and resource sectors already experiencing impacts from climate and other global changes. It comprises a set of resilience dimensions with a candidate set of abstract and concrete resilience indicators. Its design ensures an integrated approach to resilience evaluation.
Environmental Science and Policy, 2021
Climate change is having a significant influence on global fish production as well as on small-scale fishers' livelihoods, nutrition, and food security. We compared two climate-sensitive small-scale fisheries (SSFs)-an Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic and the Coastal-Vedda in Sri Lanka-to broaden our understanding of how fisheries-dependent Indigenous communities respond and adapt to climate change impacts. We used three steps to achieve this comparative study. To do this, we developed a resilience-based conceptual framework to empirically assess adaptations in two SSF communities, based on a literature review. Using the proposed framework and collecting qualitative field data over three years (2016-2019) to investigate how different remote SSFs experience and respond to climate change, we assessed Inuit and Coastal-Vedda case studies. The framework provided the structure for data analysis and conceptual guidance for two empirical assessments and the comparative analysis. Finally, we carried out the comparative analysis across the case studies using content analysis, identifying adaptive strategies, sources of resilience, and characteristics of successful adaptation. Additionally, we used discourse analysis to develop sources of resilience and characteristics of successful adaptation. Two key adaptive strategies emerged in common across the two communities-diversification and adaptive co-management. Eight sources of resilience that underpin adaptive capacity: i) use of diverse kinds of knowledge; ii) practice of different ways of learning; iii) use of community-based institutions; iv) efforts to improve human agency; v) unique worldviews; vi) specific cultural attributes that keep up with adaptation; vii) effective social networks; and viii) a high level of flexibility. Definitive characteristics that need to promote successful community adaptation: continuous learning through knowledge co-production; capacity-building to improve human agency; a place-specific nature (rootedness); collective action and partnerships through community-based institutions; and flexibility.
A major gap exists in integrating climate projections and social-ecological vulnerability analyses at scales that matter, which has affected local-scale adaptation planning and actions to date. We address this gap by providing a novel methodology that integrates information on: (i) the expected future climate, including climate-related extreme events, at the village level; (ii) an ecological assessment of the impacts of these climate forecasts on coral reefs; and (iii) the social adaptive capacity of the artisanal fishers, to create an integrated vulnerability assessment on coastal communities in five villages in Papua New Guinea. We show that, despite relatively proximate geographies, there are substantial differences in both the predicted extreme rainfall and temperature events and the social adaptive capacity among the five fishingdependent communities, meaning that they have likely different vulnerabilities to future climate change. Our methodology shows that it is possible to capture social information and integrate this with climate and ecological modeling in ways that are best suited to address the impacts of climate-mediated environmental changes currently underway across different scales.
Building social and ecological resilience to climate change in Roviana, Solomon Islands
Roviana and Vonavona Lagoons comprise a diverse social-ecological system that has supported human populations for 15,000 years. The area has a highly dynamic history socially, environmentally and geologically with influences including; epicentre of tribal warfare, religious diversity, major battleground for World War II, high rainfall, tectonic uplift/subsidence and tsunamis. This dynamic social-ecological history has built an inherent resilience into the communities and ecosystems present. We anticipate this resilience will, to some extent, buffer Roviana and Vonavona to future climate change pressures. However, the integrated assessment conducted indicated a number of factors that are reducing this resilience and making the Roviana socio-ecological system more vulnerable to climate change. Marine-Lack of adequate management of passages and offshore reefs, lack of connectivity between seagrass, mangrove and reef in some marine protected area, limited genetic connectivity between Roviana and elsewhere in some fish species, high loads of sediments and nutrients from unsustainable logging in Roviana catchment. Coastal-Significant human disturbance of mangroves, tectonic subsidence causing mangrove die-back, lack of awareness of importance of mangroves for coastal protection, some communities will have village area halved from 50cm sea level rise. Gardens-Traditional knowledge surrounding gardens and bushfoods not being passed on, increase in pests and diseases of food crops, lack of skills to improve soil fertility, increasing reliance on processed foods, fertile garden land being used for commercial agroforestry. Social-Erosion of traditional value systems, high levels of youth unemployment, erosion of customary governance. Whilst some of these factors are externally driven, many can be addressed at the local level through community based adaptation. Through a consultative participatory process with Roviana people we have identified several local actions that will re-enforce existing community resilience. Marine ecosystems can be strengthened by improving management of mangrove ecosystems, increasing connectivity between seagrass, mangroves and reef habitats, enforcing existing catchment management regulations. Coastal ecosystems can be protected through limiting removal of mangroves adjacent to villages and coconut plantations. Gardening practices could be improved through better land use planning to limit agroforestry encroachment onto garden lands, training in soil fertility improvement methods, distribution of species/cultivars more resistant to climate extremes. Valuable traditional knowledge of garden practices and bushfoods should be documented for future generations. Roviana people have a strong history of adapting in the face of dramatic social-ecological changes, with a blend of new ideas presented in this report and the existing rich body of traditional ecological knowledge we anticipate the Roviana communities will sustain and flourish under the influences of global climate change in the coming centuries.
A framework for assessing community adaptation to climate change in a fisheries context
A framework for assessing community adaptation to climate change in a fisheries context, 2019
There is a rapidly growing body of scholarship on climate change adaptation in diverse contexts globally. Despite this, climate adaptation at the community level has not received adequate conceptual attention, and a limited number of analytical frameworks are available for assessing place-specific adaptations, particularly in a fisheries context. We use conceptual material from social-ecological systems (SES) resilience and human development resilience to build an integrated framework for evaluating community adaptations to climate change in a fisheries setting. The framework defines resilience as the combined result of coping, adapting, and transforming recognizing resilience as a system's capacity and as a process. This understanding of resilience integrates with the three development resilience concepts of resistance, rootedness, and resourcefulness to develop 'place-based elements' which refer to collective action, institutions, agency, and indigenous and local knowledge systems. The proposed framework can capture a local setting's place-specific attributes relating to the well-being of individuals , households, and communities, and the through integration of SES and human development con-ceptualizations addresses some of the key critiques of the notion of resilience. We have proposed this framework for application in context-specific environments-including fisheries-as a means of assessing community adaptations.
Climatic Change, 2020
Rural coastal fishery systems in tropical island nations are undergoing rapid change. Using a case study from eastern Sri Lanka, this paper examines the ways in which indigenous Coastal-Vedda fishers experience and respond to such change. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 74), focus group discussions (n = 17, 98 participants), and key informant interviews (n = 38) over a 2-year period (2016-2019). The changes that most Coastal-Vedda fishers experience are disturbance from Sri Lankan ethnic war, changes in climate and the frequency and severity of natural disasters, increased frequency of human-elephant conflicts, increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, and transformation of the Coastal-Vedda due to social modernisation. We used a resilience-based conceptual framework focusing on place, human agency, collective action and collaboration, institutions, indigenous and local knowledge systems, and learning to examine fishers' responses to rapid changes. We identified three community-level adaptive strategies used by the Coastal-Vedda: adaptive institutions with a multi-level institutional structure that facilitates collective action and collaboration, the use of culture-based fisheries (CBF), and diversification of livelihoods. We also recognized four place-specific attributes that shaped community adaptations: cultural identity and worldviews, co-management of CBF, flexibility in choosing adaptive options, and indigenous and local knowledge systems and learning. These adaptive strategies and place-specific attributes provide new insights for scientists, policymakers, and communities in the region, enabling them to more effectively work together to support community adaptation.
2018
Rapid environmental change, ranging from the collapse of fisheries to the rise of sea levels, poses significant challenges for the governance of marine resources. In Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), these changes result in the loss of marine resources, threatening both the biodiversity of coastal ecosystems and the communities that rely on them. Existing top-down, centralized forms of environmental governance lack the flexibility needed to address these issues especially at local scales, while bottomup approaches often lack the coordination and authority needed to respond quickly to change. More adaptive forms of marine governance are needed to ensure that PICTs are able to respond effectively to these environmental changes. Researchers in environmental governance have proposed “adaptive governance” (AG) as an alternative mode of governing resources that balances the benefits of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Past research has led to proposals for specific chara...